Delaware's Department of Transportation stores its salt in sheds around the state, such as this facility off I-95 near Newark. / Robert Craig, The (Wilmington, Del.) News Journal

by Melissa Nann Burke, The (Wilmington, Del.) News Journal

by Melissa Nann Burke, The (Wilmington, Del.) News Journal

WILMINGTON, Del. -- Snow-weary cities from the Midwest to Northeast have nearly exhausted their supplies of road salt, but not Delaware.

Just don't ask to share in the wealth. Salt-strapped New Jersey did, and the Delaware Department of Transportation refused.

"We need to have enough for us," DelDOT spokesman Jim Westhoff said. "We plan well, but we don't have an unlimited supply. We aren't out of the woods yet."

Delaware's salt stockpile is relatively tiny compared with those maintained by its more populous neighbors. This winter, DelDOT has gone through 77,000 tons of road salt, roughly $5 million worth.

The Maryland Highway Administration has plowed through more than 400,000 tons (nearly double what it used last year). New Jersey's Department of Transportation has used 442,000 tons. Pennsylvania's Department of Transportation has spread a record 158,000 tons just in the five-county Philadelphia region, where its supply has fallen to 15,170 tons, officials said last week.

"We're using salt faster than it's getting delivered," Gene Baum of PennDOT said. "It would be nice if we could get a break."

Westhoff said DelDOT has enough road salt on hand to last a couple of more storms, and at least 61,000 tons on order. Still, officials are concerned about getting too low â?? a dangerous prospect for the division responsible for maintaining 89 percent of Delaware roadways.

To make salt supplies last longer, DelDOT crews began spreading a mix of road salt and sand on roadways during the last two snowfalls, Westhoff said. Sand won't melt the ice, but it helps tires gain traction.

Parts of New Castle County have had 46 inches of snow this winter â?? more than double the seasonal average of 22 inches. A coastal storm could bring more Tuesday night, according to National Weather Service forecasts.

There is no national shortage of salt, according to the trade association for salt producers. They simply have been slammed with re-orders, as municipalities around the country try to replenish dwindling stockpiles after successive snow and ice storms. In some places, ice-clogged rivers have blocked the progress of barge traffic.

Government agencies try their best to estimate how much salt they'll need each winter, but they're guesses. Now, a Wisconsin county is melting ice with liquid cheese brine. A New Jersey municipality is experimenting with pickle brine.

Things haven't gotten that desperate locally yet.

International Salt, a major DelDOT supplier, gets its product from the Tarapaca Salt Flat in Chile. It takes three weeks for a ship to make the voyage from Chile to the Mid-Atlantic. Once in port, it takes days to offload, said marketing manager Mary Kay Warner.

The company has seen a 136-percent jump in the amount of salt it has transported since October, compared with last year.

"And we've still got another month of winter to go," Warner said. "We've been in a constant state of resupply. Trying to keep everyone in salt has been a challenge."